$25,000 National Geographic Contest - Compressed Air (Ambient Heat) Energy

[lancaIV]

I am really sad to read this : "National"

cause I would deliver an "Inter+National" solution like to read
here as "Antwort #5" :
       
                     www.overunity.de

by entering the thread : "Lineare Drehbewegung ..." .

Have a fine day
                       greetings
                                     OCWL

[Thaelin]

About normal, lets just lead everyone down a path that will never lead to anything and waste time.  It really saddens me that this kind of crap goes on but its all over the place. And if you even get close to something that will have merit, you get the  ringer for it. Why do we still fall for this? How about we all just move in the direction of things that have a chance instead of a brick wall. Watching how nature does things will lead to many great things and then will be simple in concept.

[Tom Booth]

About normal, lets just lead everyone down a path that will never lead to anything and waste time.  It really saddens me that this kind of crap goes on but its all over the place. And if you even get close to something that will have merit, you get the  ringer for it. Why do we still fall for this? How about we all just move in the direction of things that have a chance instead of a brick wall. Watching how nature does things will lead to many great things and then will be simple in concept.

Not sure where you are coming from. What do you think is a waste of time?

That a heat engine can run on ambient heat is, I think, a demonstrated fact. Unfortunately it seems no one has developed any kind of working machine much beyond the toy "drinking duck". There is abundant heat energy in the air. The concept is quite simple. Get rid of some of that heat by some cooling process and the rest of all that heat becomes available.

That heat engine, the "drinking duck" can run forever and produce some small amount of usable energy on nothing more than ambient heat and a tiny drop of evaporating water for cooling.

The problem is mainly getting rid of excess heat. That really is not a big problem there is just something counter intuitive about running a heat engine by throwing off heat, but that is what is necessary.

The drinking duck uses a minuscule amount of evaporating water for cooling yet, rather impressively, IMO, can run indefinitely, producing an equally minuscule amount of "free energy" from ambient heat. The Earth's surface is 71% water. We have oceans full of evaporatively cooled water which is near ice cold just a few meters below the surface. But cold water is just one way to cool a heat engine.

An Air-cycle heat pump produces much colder temperatures than evaporative cooling while also producing high grade heat, but the focus needs to be on dumping EXCESS heat as Ambient Heat is really OVER ABUNDANT!

Instead of a drop of water evaporating to cool a tiny bit of felt on a toy duck's beak, why not a cooling pond to cool a much larger ambient heat engine.

It certainly would not be necessary to use good drinking water. Any kind of cool water would do. Salty, brackish, river water, well water, ocean water, a fish pond, even sewage water for that mater.

[memoryman]

Tom, you have the 'right' idea. To go even further, it is not necessary to have a cold sink; just convert the heat directly into electricity.

[Tom Booth]

Tom, you have the 'right' idea. To go even further, it is not necessary to have a cold sink; just convert the heat directly into electricity.

I've been following the nantenna stuff since someone in here mentioned it a few years ago on another thread, if that's what you mean. Quite interesting I must say. That someday might amount to something. Last I heard, with some five million $$$$, Red Wave might come up with a prototype, but I'm not holding my breath. Anyway it isn't something I could build in my workshop in the basement.

Personally I think I might just knock something together out of tin cans and a soldering iron that can outperform what nantennas have actually been able to produce in USEABLE energy. The ultra-high frequency AC currently(?) produced(as of 2016 ? I think) isn't rectifiable. (rectifiable <- is that a real word?)

Anyway, not to be dismissive, I appreciate the input, but at this point nano-antennas seem to be a bit of a red herring. A diversion from a more straightforward and IMO promising and readily doable, by any back yard tinkerer, approach.

Not that building a combination Stirling Engine / Air Cycle System is a piece of cake or anything but I think it is at least DOABLE with my mini-metal lathe and drill press and maybe an old coffee can or two, some gasket cement and a blow torch. Maybe some duct tape, a few balloons and a rubber band. $25 grand should do it for a prototype.